| Acum niște ani |
| 10 ianuarie 2025 |
| 49 • |
Iuliu Cezar traverseaza Rubicon-ul, ocupa Roma si alunga pe Pompeius |
| 1475 • |
Batalia de la Podul Înalt: Victoria de la Vaslui prin care Stefan cel Mare, domnul Moldovei, a zdrobit armatele otomane conduse de Suleiman Pasa |
| 1493 • |
Se naste Nicolaus Olahus, umanist si istoric de origine româna, arhiepiscop de Esztergom si guvernator al Ungariei (d. 1568) |
| 1799 • |
Se naste Petrache Poenaru, revolutionar pasoptist, inventatorul stiloului (d. 1875) |
| 1839 • |
Gheorghe Asachi publica la Iasi, în tipografia Albinei Românesti, lucrarea "Atlas românesc geografic", format din 8 harti |
| 1863 • |
Prima linie publica de transport subteran din lume a fost deschisa la Londra |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, (anti)modernist |  | | (Arte vizuale) | For Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, modernism was a sinisterforce, especially in Russia, where it foretold "the most physicallydestructive revolution of the twentieth century". Richard Tempestexplores Solzhenitsyn's overt and covert (dis)engagement with Russianand European modernism, arguing that he employed modernist means toachieve anti-modernist ends. | Actually, among Solzhenitsyn's artistic negations, socialist realismlooms much larger than symbolism or even modernism as a whole. Hisfictional texts are dynamic confutations of the SocRealist "mode ofliterary production", to use Terry Eagleton's term; as well ascase-specific confutations of the subgenres of SocRealist prose, e. g.,the revolutionary novel, factory novel, kolkhoz novel, spy novel,science novel. Or even SocRealist erotica, if there ever was such athing. The writer's entire fictional and dramatic output is oriented againstSocRealist practices; in the same way that Tolstoy's fictions before1881 are consistently anti-Romantic in their aesthetics, ethics, andformal values (although after his terrible existential crisis of thatyear he begaIn contrast, it would be difficult to cite many extratextuallypolemical anti-modernist representations or themes in Solzhenitsyn'sprose. Here the pouting Likonya is something of an exception. Ofcourse, most of his works are far removed from the modernist aesthetic,indeed implicitly hostile to it, and none more so than the two cyclesof Miniatures (1958-1963; 1996-1999). These elegiac,meditative, at times mournful pieces anthropomorphize plants andanimals, rue the industrial or totalitarian uglification of thecountryside, but seldom feature individual characters or relationships.The Miniatures represent Solzhenitsyn's divagation into thegenre of the prose poem, artistic territory originally staked out byIvan Turgenev and Mikhail Prishvin and since then explored by asuccession of nature-loving authors. This kind of writing has alwaysevoked a sympathetic response among Russian readers, although anEnglish-speaking, non-nature-loving receptor might find the Miniaturesa mite too maudlin, the artistic sensibility suffusing them redolentof, say, William Cowper. For here Solzhenitsyn's archaizing tendenciesare on full display. Forests, fields, rivers and lakes, historicchurches and bell towers, villages nestling in the folds of a gentlyundulating landscape, the freshness of a spring morning, larches wanlyshedding their needles in autumn, a puppy playing in the snow, aduckling squeaking for its mother. But when things Soviet, thingsindustrial intrude into these bucolic, sacred spaces, the mood changes.In writing works that were, in a sense, anti-Tolstoyan).
To conclude. Solzhenitsyn's vast literary andnon-literary output may be read as a monumental attempt to reverse themodernist fragmentation and distortion of text and reality by relatingthe human body and the spaces it inhabits, constructs, and destroys tostable moral, political, cultural, and historical meanings. He is awonderfully sophisticated, subtle, and aware artist whose achievementshould in no way be underestimated or overlooked because of thecontroversy surrounding some of his political, social, or culturalviews. His later fictions are, to a degree, as "readerly" as they are"writerly", to use those famous Barthian terms. But all his workspossess a formal, intertextual, and subtextual elegance that is oftenmissed by receptors like Nabokov, culturally or ideologically primed toapprehend them as political docudramas or quasi-Tolstoyan exercises inthe realist representation of life. So, if one approaches aSolzhenitsynian text as a dynamic subject of knowledge, rather than anempirical object passively triggering the reader's suspension ofdisbelief, one may come up with interesting, even provocativeconclusions. And mine is this: a self-proclaimed, dedicatedanti-modernist, Solzhenitsyn learned to employ modernist means toachieve anti-modernist ends.
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